HOSEA'S STORY (1:1:2)

I. Introduction

A. Accepting the dating of the first verse, Hosea was a prophet to the northern kingdom of Israel, not to southern kingdom of Judah.

1. The dates of the kings he mentions cover a period of 128 years - his ministry covers about seventy of those years.

2. The period in which he prophesied was the darkest in Israel's history.

3. Hosea preached as he watched them decline toward the captivity.

B. The story centers around the tragedy in Hosea's family life.

1. His personal experience gives him spiritual insight into the heartbreak that God undergoes as he watches the spiritual infidelity of his people.

II. Consider First Hosea's Own Story

A. He married a woman named Gomer - Her name means heat or passion.

1. Gomer had three children - Jezreel, - Lo-ruhaman - Lo-Ammi

2. Gomer became an unfaithful wife and he cast her out.

3. She descended into deep degradation, ultimately becoming a slave - the property of another man.

B. Hosea sought her out in her desperate condition and bought her out of her degradation for the price of a slave.

1. In a tremendous act of grace, he restored her to his side as his bride. Unclean, unholy but not unloved.

2. That's the story bluntly and succinctly told.

III. Now We Consider the Story in the Light of Verse 2.

A. The statement as it reads in most transactions has created a problem in the minds of many Bible students.

1. It reads on the surface as if Hosea at God's command deliberately married a harlot at the very time she was plying her trade.

2. In the English and American Revised Versions, you will note beside the words "When Jehovah spoke at the first

by Hosea" there is a marginal note that says "When Jehovah spoke WITH".

3. It gives another insight into the passage before us.

4. It refers not to Hosea's preaching but to his communion with God.

B. Notice the phrase "at the first."

1. The writer was looking back from the end of his ministry - he was meditating on the Lord and writing out his notes

that ultimately formed this book.

2. He was saying in effect; When away back, nearly 70 years ago, when my ministry began.. Jehovah spoke with me and he commanded me to marry Gomer.

3. It does not mean she was a woman of immorality at the time she married Hosea.

4. However it is true that God knew the possibilities and the future of Gomer.

5. Hosea is saying God knowing what she would become still commanded him to marry her.

6. God also knew what that experience would do for Hosea in preparing him to carry out the prophetic ministry God had for him.

C. Israel, at that very moment was playing the harlot from God and as Hosea's children were born, their naming reflected the spirit of the age.

1. Jezreel - tells of the coming judgment of God.

2. LO-ruhamn - people who are not obtaining mercy

3. Lo-ammi - People who are rejected - not God's people.

4. All three of these children are reflective of the national condition.

D. Hosea, looking back over his life and the tragedy that had befallen him, might have said that marriage was the great mistake of my life.

1. Look at the misery it put me through look at the blight it brought upon our children.

2. He might have thought along those lines for a brief time but he rose above the natural to the supernatural and said:

3. No that's not true. God guided me. He told me to take that woman and I simply obeyed.

4. Being God, he knew all along what would happen but He still led me to this woman for my wife.

E. John Wesley was happily in love but his brother Charles interfered thinking she wasn't right for him.

1. He met a wealthy woman and married her. She was a large woman but Wesley was small: only 5' 5".

2. She was a carnal woman who would literally drag John Wesley by his hair around the house.

3. It was a horrible marriage to a cruel woman - yet when asked the secret of his ministry, John Wesley gave credit

to his wife.

4. Some of you may question your past or even your present marriage.

5. Don't despair or even question - God had something for you to learn that could not otherwise be learned.

6. You are a deeper person because of the adversity you have gone through.

7. You wouldn't be where you are now without this experience.

IV. Hosea Through His Tragedy Came to Understand The Heart of God

A. He learned that God suffers when His people sin.

1. Hosea has been described as the prophet of the broken heart.

2. The pain and agony of this man is readily apparent in this book.

3. His agony had become an interpretation of the agony in the heart of God.

4. He discovered what infidelity means to love, he discovered what it means to act in judgment even when your heart is overflowing in love.

B. Calvary is the ultimate expression of that tremendous fact.

1. God acting in judgment even when His heart is filled with love.

2. God, through the sin of Gomer has allowed Hosea to understand God's own love.

3. He would not have been as effective a preacher as he was without this experience.

V. What Are We to Learn From This Story?

A. God interprets himself to us through our own experience.

1. It was so with Joseph. On the day when his brethren came and he made himself known to them, and when they were weeping and bewailing the fact that they had treated him so badly, Joseph said to them, "God did send me before you, to preserve life."

2. He said in effect, You treated me badly. You put me in the den. You sold me into slavery. Oh yes, you did it,

but there is a higher realm of interpretation. I have suffered years of imprisonment. But now I see the meaning

of it all: God sent me before you, to preserve life.

B. That's the Final Value of the Story of Job

1. The philosophers of the day could not fit Job's suffering into their system.

2. When we get to the end of the book, and Job is talking to Cod, we find out that suffering cannot be accounted for at the moment.

3. God may be preparing you and doing some thing in your life that will pass down the years.

4. In the case of Hosea, his own broken heart gave him an understanding of God's broken heart.

C. When in obedience to God, he went after Gomer and brought her back, he discovered God's attitude even toward those whose sin broke his heart. God's love will find a way for the sinner to come home.